Tuesday, August 07, 2018

ANIMAL PAPER #2


8 comments:

Larry Louree said...

How do you explain "blood sweating Hippo"?

Chic Silber said...


They supposedly exude some reddish fluid

that might be considered a version of sweat

Never saw that myself from the female

hippo on the Beatty front end for years

She had a semi trailer to herself with

a central water tank that got cleaned

out very regularly as she was able to

get out of the truck for a while

Seemed pretty easy going to me

Tony Greiner said...

I drove the hippo truck for part of a season and watered the beast in a similar rig for Johnny Frazier. I am drawing a blank on its name. It was a male, and it definitely put out a reddish sweat (I guess it was sweat). The workmen showed me how you could slide your hands between its lips, and it would open its mouth and you could make your fingers real stiff and scratch its tongue. He liked this a LOT. Lord knows who discovered it.

Absolute idiocy to stick your arms into the mouth of a hippo, but I was young and immortal. I thought it was a fun thing to do for the towners, but somehow girls were never that impressed by it.

I drained his tank every morning before the jump, and refilled it with a firehouse when I got to the lot. After a long jump he was pretty thirsty and would put his mouth around the firehouse and drink from it as it sprayed all over creation. I've got a photo somehwere, but mostly all you can see is water spraying around and some big teeth.

Chic Silber said...


Please send that photo (& others)

to "sunshine@aadata.com"

I need more material to keep up

so feel free to send anything

of decent quality for future use

Paul Gutheil said...

They secrete a reddish fluid naturally which keeps their skin from cracking in the hot African wilderness.
They are considered herbivores in general, but have been documented eating the meat of dead carcasses. Interestingly they can outrun a human with ease, clocked at times hitting 35mph.

Larry Louree said...

I had heard that too.

Richard Reynolds said...

Big Otto was indeed a female hip. She had along history. Born in the Cincinnati zoo, she was acquired by Zack Terrell for his version of the Cole show in 1943. Because the war was on she got the name “War Baby.”

In the terrible Rochester WQ fire of early 1940 Cole had lost its hippo, a pygmy that had come from National Zoo. To help out, John North loaned Terrell the RBBB Nile hippo Chester who toured with Cole that year and also in 1941 - 1942. When Cole got its own hippo from Cincinnati Chester was shipped to Peru and in 1944 was shipped back to Sarasota.

The “new” Cole hippo was with the show until it closed in 1950. She then went to Paul Kelly who put her with other shows, including Kelly Morris in 1952 and 1953 and the Gem City shows in 1954. She was sold to Bob Snowden who had her on the Royal American Carnival in 1957. Toward the end of that season he put her with the Clyde Beatty show where she was a pit attraction. Snowden sold her to the Beatty show, and she went out with it in 1958. Floyd King renamed her “Big Otto.” In March 1958 she got loose from Deland WQ and was at large for a time. This made the press everywhere. I always figured old Floyd staged the “escape.”

Big Otto was with the Beatty show in 1958 and then Beatty-Cole from 1959 until her death around 1975 or 1976. She died as a result of injuries sustained when her semi rolled off the highway in northern Alabama near Muscle Shoals.

The poster of Big Otto was a poorer copy of one used on RBBB beginning in 1942.

Anonymous said...

I can certainly see why it would be preferable to display a female hippo. The male will mark his territory by violently whipping his tail while deficating. They will send crap flying for yards.